Abstract: Conflict over gender and power has been central to the history of modernity. It is the comparative and international analysis of the interaction of gender and the field of the political that is the focus of this project. What is the relationship between women´s organizations struggling for access to water, land and decent wages and feminist organizations and ideologies? What ideas are at the core of the understanding of gender equality and of feminism in different national and regional contexts? What kind of demands? While research on the interaction between women’s rights and the field of the political has expanded, research that analyses the diversified (and often contradictory) ways through which women´s movements globally are shaped and influenced by feminism as an ideology remains un-theorised and poorly empirically research.

The aim of this project is to explore the heterogeneity of women´s movements critically asserting the variety of meaning giving to gender equality and feminism globally. We want to through a comparative and international scope to analyze the different kinds of women´s organizations and of feminisms that evolve in diverse national/regional contexts. We want to critically assert the varied; contradictory and conflicting roles that women´s organizations and feminisms play in strengthen democratic practices within civil society. Questions regarding the meaning of feminism and the relationship between movements of social protest and feminism remain contested issues globally. These questions at are the core of this research program.